Trial date set in Oklahoma foster-care lawsuit

Trial date set in Oklahoma foster-care lawsuit

By DAVID HARPER World Staff Writer
Published: 7/7/2010  10:56 PM
Last Modified: 7/7/2010  10:57 PM

A trial date that is well more than a year away was scheduled Wednesday in a class-action lawsuit that seeks changes in the state’s foster-care system.

U.S. District Judge Gregory Frizzell set the trial for Oct. 17, 2011, but said the date “may be a bit ambitious” in light of the scope of the case. He told attorneys that “it will require all of your efforts” to attain the goal.

Marcia Robinson Lowry, one of the attorneys for the plaintiffs, had asked that the nonjury trial be scheduled for next summer. However, Frizzell said a setting some 15 months in the future is more realistic.

Even though the lawsuit was filed in February 2008, it essentially became a new case earlier this year after the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Frizzell’s 2009 decision to grant the plaintiffs’ request for class-action status, the judge said.

On behalf of the Oklahoma Department of Human Services, attorney Donald Bingham apologized for the slower-than-anticipated pace of providing pretrial “discovery” materials to the plaintiffs. His apology reiterated that made last Thursday by co-counsel David Page at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Frank McCarthy.

McCarthy had expressed his dissatisfaction with the number of case files that had been shared with the plaintiffs, and he said that if improvements are not made, the court could issue orders that DHS might consider “draconian.”

McCarthy said the approximately 44 complete case files that were supplied to the plaintiffs’ lawyers in June — as well as the more than 1,400 hours DHS devoted to the effort that month — was unacceptably low and far less than DHS had estimated it could accomplish.

Page told Frizzell on Wednesday that DHS has shared with the plaintiffs 15 more complete case files since then. As of this week, he said, 10 more employees are working full-time on the project and will continue to do so over the next two months. That will more than double the effort that was expended in June, he said.

After the initial 200 case files to be produced have been shared, another group of 200 will be assembled and disclosed to the plaintiffs.

Also, the defense received a request from the plaintiffs just this week for information pertaining to more than 200 children who they say may have been victims of abuse while in state custody. It was not clear Wednesday whether any of those children are among the 400 whose case files were already requested by the plaintiffs.

Saying DHS is not stalling, Bingham noted that since March 26 the defense has turned over more than 155,000 pages of documents that contain the sort of “systemic” information about DHS that is relevant to the plaintiffs’ claims.

He did not suggest a specific trial date, advocating instead that the lawsuit progress in stages until a realistic date becomes apparent.

Lowry said a firm setting was important to the progress of the case.

In the meantime, McCarthy has asked for written updates on the discovery issues from each side by Aug. 6, with a hearing set for Aug. 10.

By DAVID HARPER World Staff Writer


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